How-to: Build your server for the future : Texxors.com

How-to: Build your server for the future

May 13, 2007 Posted by Jeff in : DIY, How-to, New Products , trackback, Email this post

It amazes me how many times I walk into a new client and see the same thing - they ran out of room on their server because the system partition is too small. It reminds me of those silly â€œPlan Aheadâ€ posters that were all the rage in the ’70s, where the words ran across the bottom, then had to kinda take a turn up the side a little. But itâ€™s good advice to plan ahead, instead of buying some pre-canned thing that Dell offers. Nothing wrong with Dell, in fact, their service is great, but glitz it up a little. Hereâ€™s some things to remember from a battle-hardened IT guy that will make your life with your new server a bit more bearable. I will be touching on generalities here, so you can elaborate on my points for your own needs.

For starters, you need to consider what you are using the server for. I try to avoid the standard scenario, which is a basic server with 2 giant hard disks mirrored, and partitioned into separate volumes. For redundancy and reliability, this is ok, but for performance, there are better options.

Instead of that previous scenario, start by considering having 2 mechanically separate volumes. One for system, and one for data. For an example, we will build an Exchange server for a small business that has 20 users. For the System Volume, Iâ€™d choose a pair of 80GB hard drives mirrored. This is a good size to run the OS and the Exchange program. Plus, if you need to re-sync the drives, that size wonâ€™t take quite as long as a 250GB set. Which leads us to the Data Volume - I like to find something as large and reliable as possible. Iâ€™d pick a pair of 250 GB drives, mirrored, for my data volume. This is where the Exchange database will sit, as well as the file store (Exchange 2003 can store file attachments in a separate place). If you are creating this for a law firm, double the storage size, and create aÂ 3rdvolume set just for the file attachments, unless you have the luxury of a separate NAS (Network Attached Storage device). If youâ€™re doing this on SATA drives, which I like for cost and reliability, you can add another SATA controller for this, unless you have sufficient raid ports on your motherboard.

This method of separate physical volumes and drives will add more reliability and make booting and re-syncing faster than waiting for all 250 or 500 GB to get online. You will also notice a performance increase, because while system things and exchange things are happening at the same time, they wonâ€™t interfere with each other, since they are reading and writing to separate drives. Nice! Another advantage is that if a drive goes flat, your customer wonâ€™t skip a beat, and they will think youâ€™re great (set it up to email you system alerts).

Next, let’s consider memory. Find out how much the serverâ€™s motherboard will allow, then put that much in. Memory is relatively cheap, so why cheap out? Find out the fastest memory speed that the motherboard is capable of, and thatâ€™s what you want - something close to that speed.

Lastly, think about your backup tape scenario. Remember that the larger your storage, the more expensive you backup situation will be. It can get pretty expensive, especially if you want to go the unattended route. For big storage, I recommend a tape changer, or a Disk based backup, but again, thatâ€™s big bucks. I also would look into the new product by Symantec called Backup Exec System Recovery 7. It will restore and get you back up and running in minutes instead of hours. And it works well in conjunction with Backup Exec 11d. It can also compress up to about 40% so you might save some space there. The other nice thing is that down the road, as larger drives come out, you can use SR7 to reload the partitions onto larger drives, or you can use what I call â€œstep mirroring.â€ Thatâ€™s where you break the mirror, put a larger drive on one side, resync, then break it again and put the duplicate large drive on the other side, then re-size the partition (crazy but it works!).

As far as hardware preferences, if you are on a tight budget, look at Dell. They will customize the machine however you like and they have pretty decent reliability. If you need a hard core enterprise unit with tank-like reliability, look at HP servers. CDW carries a full line of HP servers and their systems people do a very nice job putting them together. Thatâ€™s my opinion based on my experience -Â your experience might be different.

So some simple planning and thinking ahead will set you up for a good 4 years service out of a dependable server, even longer if you play your cards right and keep things running lean, clean and cool. Thatâ€™s right, donâ€™t forget the environment is just as important. A cool room that doesnâ€™t get above 76 degrees, and dust out your machines regularly.

-=Jeff Gross=-